March 19, 2013
Awarded to Apple today by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, a patent dubbed "Synchronized, interactive augmented reality displays for multifunction devices" highlights an augmented-reality system that would capture a live video feed of a real object to display on a portable device. The technology would then overlay information about that object on the device.
In one example cited in the patent, a user could point the camera of a portable device at a computer circuit board. The live video feed would display images of the board overlaid with annotations describing its various parts. Those annotations could include information from a local or network database, an online library, or a Web site.
The AR display would be interactive. You could create your own annotations by writing or drawing them on your portable device. You could even share those annotations with other people as a virtual way of collaborating on the same information.
A touch-sensitive phone or tablet would come into play if you wanted to create your own annotations for the object being viewed.
See the full story here: http://www.cnet.com/news/apple-patents-augmented-reality-system/
See the patent here: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=39&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=%28apple.ASNM.+AND+20130319.PD.%29&OS=an/apple+and+isd/3/19/2013&RS=%28AN/apple+AND+ISD/20130319%29%22